Erwin Schrödinger quotes - page 2

The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. (Erwin Schrödinger)
The mathematical framework of quantum theory has passed countless successful tests and is now universally accepted as a consistent and accurate description of all atomic phenomena. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
The verbal interpretation, on the other hand, i.e. the metaphysics of quantum physics, is on far less solid ground. In fact, in more than forty years physicists have not been able to provide a clear metaphysical model. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has shown that the subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
The present is the only things that has no end. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
How would we express in terms of the statistical theory the marvelous faculty of a living organism, by which it delays the decay into thermodynamical equilibrium (death)?... the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness... really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
We must therefore not be discouraged by the difficulty of interpreting life by the ordinary laws of physics. For that is just what is to be expected from the knowledge we have gained of the structure of living matter. We must also be prepared to find a new type of physical law prevailing in it. Or are we to term it a non-physical, not to say a super-physical, law? View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
The only possible alternative is simply to keep to immediate experience that consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown; that there is only one thing and that what seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing, produced by a deception (the Indian MAJA); the same illusion is produced in a gallery of mirrors, and in the same way Gaurisankar and Mt Everest turned out to be the same peak seen from different valleys. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
If I try to hold on the currently predominant view and derive the unity of my self, ... I find myself with an impenetrable thicket of questions. ... Why is it precisely at this intermediate level in the hierarchy of successively superimposed unities (cell, organ, human body, state)-why, I ask, it is precisely at the level of my body that unitary self-consciousness comes into the picture, whereas the cell and the organ do not as yet possess it and the state possesses it no longer? View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
In particular, and most importantly, this is the reason why the scientific worldview contains of itself no ethical values, no esthetical values, not a word about our own ultimate scope or destination, and no God, if you please. Whence came I and whither go I? View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
You may ask - you are bound to ask me now: What, then, is in your opinion the value of natural science? I answer: Its scope, aim and value is the same as that of any other branch of human knowledge. Nay, none of them alone, only the union of all of them, has any scope or value at all, and that is simply enough described: it is to obey the command of the Delphic deity: gnothi seauton... get to know yourself! (Erwin Schrödinger)
The laws of physics and chemistry are statistical throughout. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
I consider it extremely doubtful whether the happiness of the human race has been enhanced by the technical and industrial developments that followed in the wake of rapidly progressing natural science. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
The spread, both in and width and depth, of the multifarious branches of knowledge by during the last hundred odd years has confronted us with a queer dilemma. We feel clearly that we are only now beginning to acquire reliable material for welding together the sum total of all that is known into a whole; but, on the other hand, it has become next to impossible for a single mind fully to command more than a small specialized portion of it. I can see no other escape from this dilemma (lest our true who aim be lost for ever) than that some of us should venture to embark on a synthesis of facts and theories, albeit with second-hand and incomplete knowledge of some of them -and at the risk of making fools of ourselves. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
Not one word is said here of acausality, wave mechanics, indeterminacy relations, complementarity, ... etc. Why doesn't he talk about what he knows instead of trespassing on the professional philosopher's preserves? Ne sutor supra crepidam. On this I can cheerfully justify myself: because I do not think that these things have as much connection as is currently supposed with a philosophical view of the world. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
The task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
we never experiment with just one electron or atom or (small) molecule. In thought-experiments we sometimes assume that we do. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
I would not call [entanglement] one but rather the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
We have just introduced the term gene for the hypothetical material carrier of a definite hereditary feature... View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
Our creed [atheism] is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (and similar people), consider our ethics much inferior, indeed abominable. There is that little difference. We adhere to ours in practice, you don't. (Erwin Schrödinger)
Quantum physics thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators. The reason why we believe that we are in it, that we belong to the picture, is that our bodies are in the picture. Our bodies belong to it. Not only my own body, but those of my friends, also of my dog and cat and horse, and of all the other people and animals. And this is my only means of communicating with them. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger
For a solitary animal egoism is a virtue that tends to preserve and improve the species: in any kind of community it becomes a destructive vice. View quote
Erwin Schrödinger